Being Transformation. Intro to Ecosystems Thinking for Native Catalysts

Redefining sustainability to accommodate complexity.

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

— Dr. Seuss

Things are changing. They always have been. Human history is an unstoppable motion, continuously striving towards transforming itself. All kinds of change processes have been happening to humanity since day one. Our self- and world-view, our habits, and ways to organise life changed quite a few times during our existence on Earth.

Entering the 3d decade of this century, there is an increasing sense that basic ideas we are guided by and those that shape structures we’ve built to make sense of the world are becoming outdated: the “factory model” of education, mindless overconsumption of planetary resources, intolerance to cultural pluralism, ways of production that lead to environmental degradation, superficial short-term-gain-driven politics, neoliberal mindset, cultural integrities challenged by the rapid digitalisation and slow catching up of social and emotional development, and so on.

There are quite a few issues that demand change and involve a conscious collaborative and transdisciplinary effort for co-creation of new narratives, and thus a different cultural paradigm. What is this change about? What are the common denominators of it across and beyond different “departments” of societies? How are various ecologies that we inhabit connected? Is there a link between one’s personal and a larger cultural transformation?

Today’s zeitgeist is a polyphonic chorus where voices singing of care for pluriversal ecologies, regeneration and renewal are probably the most vibrant and relevant to the whole discourse on sustainability.

Care for ecologies calls not only for a set of how-to’s aimed at reducing the footprint of human existence on the planet (as sustainability narratives usually go), but on a deeper level a mindset and a way of taking care of direct and metaphorical ecologies we inhabit, realising their interconnectedness, and integrating multitudes: the rational and the poetic, body and mind, personal and political, inner and outer, reconnecting our fragmented worlds.

Care for plural ecologies is care for plural ways of tending for human and ecological wellbeing. Physical wellbeing cannot be separated from the emotional, mental, social, and environmental. Human wellbeing is inevitably connected to that of the world around — our manyfold relationships and entanglements with other humans and other-than-humans, soil, water, air, plants, animals, insects,…

We are ecosystems within larger ecosystems. Ecosystems thinking acknowledges interconnectedness between the personal and the relational, local and global. It may be at the root of the emerging cultural paradigm, voicing interconnectedness of individual and societal transformation. We are fractals of larger patterns. Here, philosophical reflection, lived embodied experience, empirical information, and intuitive creativity, are all integrated and thoroughly entwined.

Aligning with Einstein’s lifelong quest for discovering the unified source of nature’s intelligence, in a series of short essays to come, I will attempt to share glimpses into an on-going inquiry Foresta Collective have been involved with in these past few years. Taking ecosystems thinking to the heart of our work, we try to stay grounded within entanglements and interconnectedness between personal, relational and systemic change — we see a shift towards more regenerative living happening on these different levels as one process. The following chapters will go deeper into:

• Personal Ecologies
• Relational Spaces
• Attentiveness and Presence
• Opposites and Balance
• Crafting Futures
• Gentle Steps

While researching these subjects we have conversations with people from a variety of fields involved in transforming their world of many worlds, as Marisol de la Cadena puts it. Although everyone we spoke with so far comes from a different background, common insights emerge that cross disciplinary boundaries and fixed identities.

Stay tuned and be patient, I will reflect on these subjects as a personal inquiry into change of values, enriched by cross-pollinated viewpoints. It won’t be a settled account of things, but rather a current crystallisation of what could be described as catalyst elements for transformative processes taking place in the world that I notice and experience.

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